July 27, 2024 - “Water and stone”

You spend so much time thinking about being a person that sometimes you forget to be one. Even now, you leave a moment of bliss to come write this down before it’s gone, and by the time you are out of the pool the right phrase has left your mind, and if time were really ours we’d be able to go back and now you are here wishing you could read your own thoughts like a book. You disappoint yourself by being human. You smoke some more and go back to where you were sitting, on the steps in the pool, where the sun shone and you remembered to close your eyes and feel it. You do it again, you close your eyes and listen to the constant flutter of water slapping against stone, to the lawnmower next door, the car pulling into a gravel driveway, the pool water again, the cawing of some bird, the squeaking of another, water and stone, a car door slamming, two doors and then keys. You see him through the patchy stalks of wood between your yards, see a child picked up and carried inside, a woman emptying the trunk, her and the man both holding large coffees. They walk right when you think they’ll go left, and you realize you've been looking at their garage this whole time, not their house. The house is to the right, past a thicker bush that does not let you see through it, and watching them disappear behind the green mass, you enjoy the idea that you are nothing to them.